


Gonna Miss This

by LittleSweetCheeks



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Gen, Loss, Lots of Angst, Lots of Hurt, Major character death - Freeform, No HEA, Plane Crash, Team as Family, Tissue Warning, loss of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 06:05:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSweetCheeks/pseuds/LittleSweetCheeks
Summary: “I wanted you to understand and… I have always wanted to share the people in my life with you, but I wasn’t sure if you were ready. I didn’t have any other family, just them. And in one night, I lost them all.” She took her daughter’s hand. “I have done my best with raising you, to always remember the lessons they taught me. To remember that I was capable and that there was goodness in the world.”





	Gonna Miss This

Chloe kicked her scuffed sneakers against the bottom of the dash, arms folded across her chest. “You just don’t get it, Mom! I just wanted to be unique!”

Her mother reached across the SUV and patted the leg of Chloe’s paint-covered jeans. “I do get it, Sweetie. But you should have asked before dying your hair green. I know you feel like you’re growing up, but you’re still a kid, Kiddo.”

Chloe eyed her mother, wondering how she had any clue what it was like to want to be unique. Her mom worked a boring nine to five job at some boring tech company. The most exciting thing she’d ever seen her wear was a light purple blouse with her very traditional black pencil skirt. Looking her mom over, Chloe took in her very clean-cut, shoulder-length blonde hair, her boring black-framed glasses, and her barely-there make-up. “You can’t get it at all. Your whole life is about fitting in.”

When they got to the school, she put the car in park. Chloe’s mom turned in her seat to face her daughter. “Chloe… This time, being a kid, it goes by so fast. You need to enjoy it, don’t try to grow up too soon because once you’re an adult you can’t ever go back. I _do_ know. I tried for a really long time to put it off.” She looked over her fourteen-year-old daughter. “Maybe…”

“Maybe?”

She sighed. “Maybe you need to know some stuff about your ol’ mom that you never knew before.” She glanced up at the school and then back to the girl. “Tell you what, how would you like to play hooky today?”

“Really?” Chloe lit up.

“Yeah!” She laughed when her daughter nodded vigorously, putting the vehicle in gear and pulling away. “I have some calls to make and then we’ll do something today.”

==

After a stop for pedicures, Chloe followed her mom into the small restaurant, only just starting to get busy for lunch. She wasn’t sure who they were meeting, her mom wouldn’t say, but as they entered, a man with light brown hair stood, smiling at them.

“Hey, Aunt Pen.” The man greeted, offering his hand, which her mom bypassed, wrapping him in a giant hug. Chloe was surprised, her mom was never big on overt displays of affection in public. “Can’t breathe.” He chuckled as he fake wheezed.

She pulled away. “How are you, Jack?”

He motioned for them to sit before sitting himself, brushing his tie smooth as he did so. “I’m good.”

“You look so much like your dad now, especially with the suit, Sweetie. The job treating you well?”

“Yes, long hours, you know, but I love it.”

“That’s good, doing what you love. And your dad? How is he?”

Jack’s smile fell. “I try to go up there a few times a week. The doctors think he’s leveled off, but I don’t know. Last time I was there, he thought I was Sean for the first hour. You should go see him, I bet he’d love to see you.”

“I’ve been afraid to. Is that horrible?”

He shook his head. “No. I understand.”

Chloe finally spoke up. “Mom, who’s this?”

Penelope turned to her daughter. “This, Sweetie, is Jack Hotchner. He’s a doctor.”

“A doctor?”

She nodded. “I’ve known Jack since before he was even a little bundle in his parents’ arms. I used to work with his dad.”

She turned to Jack. “Your dad is an analyst too?”

His smile faltered. “No. He was an FBI agent.” His eyes met Penelope’s. “She doesn’t know?”

“I never found a good time to tell her before. But today…”

He nodded. “Dad tried to keep it all from me too.” He reached into the empty chair and pulled out a box. “That explains asking me to bring this then.” He placed it in the middle of the table.

Penelope pulled the lid off, lifting a photo off the top. “We all always wished you didn’t know as much as you always did.”

“I know.”

“Know what? If he was an FBI agent, how did you work with him?”

Penelope sighed. “Honey, before the job I have now… I was an analyst for the FBI. Specifically, I worked for Jack’s dad.”

“With.” Jack corrected.

Penelope rolled her eyes. “You sound like him too.”

He smiled.

Flipping through pictures, Penelope passed one to her daughter. “This was the team.”

Chloe took the print and stared at it. It was a group of people, four of them were sitting on a small couch with another two on the arms, leaning in, draped over the people beside them. The last one was lying across their laps and everyone had giant grins on their faces. Chloe squinted at the person dressed in bright colors. “Is… Is that you, Mom?”

“Yep.”

“Why are you dressed all weird?”

Jack laughed at that. “Aunt Pen always dressed like that. Dad said she was their quirky guiding star, bringing them home after a case.”

“Really?” She was having a hard time reconciling her boring, by the book mom with the woman in the picture. “Who are these other people?”

Penelope leaned over. She was on the right in the photo, seated on the loveseat. “Leaning on my shoulder there is Emily, and on my other side is Spencer. Next is JJ and then Dave and on the end is Derek.”

“And across your laps?”

“My dad.” Jack spoke up.

“He’d tried to get out of the photo, but we dragged him down.”

“This was in his office, right?” Jack asked.

Penelope nodded. “You would have been maybe six or seven at the time. I want to say it was just before we all left for annual leave that year.”

“They were all analysts?”

“No, Sweetie. This team…” She cast a glance to Jack, who nodded. “They, we, chased down serial killers. All over the country. It was a sucky, shit job but…” She sighed. “We were family to each other.”

“Oh.” She could hear the sadness in her mom’s voice. “Where are they now?”

Penelope’s eyes filmed over with tears and Jack reached across and gripped her hands, speaking when he knew she couldn’t. “The others, they died.”

“All of them?”

He nodded. “The team…” His voice cracked. “The team was on their way back from a case out west, crossing the mountains when something malfunctioned, I never found out what though. I guess I could find out. The jet they were in went down, I heard some adults at the time saying between the force of the crash, the rocks and the snow, there was hardly a piece left that was identifiable as a plane. Just confetti.

“Rescuers didn’t find them until the following morning and it was sub-zero temperatures.” His eyes were gazing, unfocused, into the middle distance, reciting almost as if from a book. “Garcia always tracked their flights, so she could talk to them, and had begged and screamed for them to be found for hours, until she totally lost her voice.”

“Garcia?”

“Me.” The blonde whispered.

“The rescue mission turned into a recovery mission.” He hesitated. “The two pilots were found first, still strapped into their seats. They had been members of the small rotation that flew the team around the country for years. Spence and Morgan, who were thrown in a similar direction, they had broken bones and things. Then JJ and Emily were still sort of inside the main debris field, it didn’t look like they’d tried to move at all, no drag marks or anything in the snow. Then Dave.” He swallowed. “He was at the back and they think he didn’t die right away. There were signs that he bled out trying to get free of the crumpled wreckage. And then they found my dad. He was so cold, but he had a weak pulse.”

“He survived?”

Jack opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Understanding, Penelope continued. “For a long time, I don’t think ‘surviving’ was the right word. I quit the Bureau and got the job I have now and with that I sold all the clothes I had, all of the crazy knick knacks, the funny hair clips, everything. I prayed and made a deal, if Aaron lived, if Jack got to keep his dad, then I would change everything about me and become a good little boring worker bee.”

“When was this?”

She had to think a second about that. “About two years before you were born.”

“Oh.”

Penelope laid out some more photos, some of herself, others of other people from the first photo. “But before I had the wonderfulness that was you, this was me.”

Chloe looked at the pictures, it was definitely her mother, dressed in a variety of bright, sparkly, and almost gaudy outfits. Hair up it an assortment of clips, feathers, and bows. She still couldn’t believe it, but maybe her mom really did understand. “So, what happened to him?”

The two adults exchanged a long look. “Sweetie… Aaron, Jack’s dad, was the strongest person I ever knew. Inside and out. He survived a lot, even before that day. But it changed him. He was in a coma for six months.”

“You helped care for me.” Jack added in.

Garcia gave him a weak smile. “When he first woke up, he couldn’t remember anything, but eventually…”

Jack cleared his throat. “Over time he began to remember things about his life and ask questions and then the memories of the wreck came back. He remembered seeing…” His voice caught. “Them. He remembered seeing them. The grief… It destroyed him.”

Chloe looked at her mom. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I wanted you to understand and… I have always wanted to share the people in my life with you, but I wasn’t sure if you were ready. I didn’t have any other family, just them. And in one night, I lost them all.” She took her daughter’s hand. “I have done my best with raising you, to always remember the lessons they taught me. To remember that I was capable and that there was goodness in the world.”

“You were the goodness in their world.” Jack answered. “Dad said so once.”

Penelope studied him for a minute and then looked at her daughter. “I haven’t been to see him in person since just after you were born.”

“You really should go.” Jack repeated his earlier statement. His dad’s health was deteriorating faster in the past year, there had been a lasting mental toll from being the only survivor. He’d held on, barely, until his son had reached adulthood, but things had slipped downhill from there. Jack could remember the day he and his aunt had finally decided that the best choice was full time care.

“We should, you’re right.”

Her words startled him. “We?”

Penelope smiled and nodded. “Let’s go. Today. After we eat.”

==

Chloe followed her mom and Jack through the halls of the facility. When her mom had suggested she play hooky from school, she had thought it would be to go to the mall or watch movies, not wandering an institution that tried its best to look homey for its residents. The room they were looking for was on the second floor and inside a secured ward.

“Is this necessary?” Chloe heard her mother whisper.

“It’s for the best.” Jack led them in, smiling at the frail looking man sitting in a chair staring out the window. “Hey Dad.”

Penelope watched the way the man she used to know never turned from the window. It reminded her of the time that felt like a lifetime ago when she’d accompanied Reid to visit his mother. “Hotch?” She tried.

The man slowly turned his head, staring at her for a full minute before turning back to the window, visibly swallowing. “You’re not real either.”

Confused, she turned to Jack.

“Part of…everything. His hallucinations, they’re of the team.” Jack whispered.

Her heart broke and she crossed the room, taking his hand. “I’m not one of them. I’ m here and I’m real. Look, Hotch. Do you remember?” She pointed at her daughter. “She was just a baby, but I brought Chloe to see you.”

Chloe watched the pained look on her mom’s face as she tried to get through to Jack’s dad. Not understanding why, she felt tears fill her eyes and her chin tremble. Clearly he’d been very important to her. After what felt like an eternity, her mom stood and brushed herself off before wrapping him in a tight hug. Chloe heard her whisper ‘Take care, Boss Man.’ and for a moment, she saw his eyes seem to clear as he glanced her way.

“You look like someone I used to know.” Aaron said directly to Chloe, but he didn’t say more as Penelope pulled away and let a single sob escape.

==

In her bedroom later, Chloe pulled out the photo her mom had shown her at the diner, she’d managed to sneak it as they’d been packing up. On the back in unfamiliar even script were the names of the people in the picture. Turning on her laptop, she started searching the names one by one and learned all about the elite FBI team and the monsters they chased. There were video clips of press conferences and she clicked on one to listen to them speak. In one, the man she’d seen today was talking, standing tall and dressed in a suit. His voice was confident and authoritative, totally different to how broken and small he’d sounded now. When the video ended, Chloe was startled by a sound in her doorway and whirled around.

“I haven’t heard any of those voices since the afternoon of the wreck.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“No, Hon. It’s okay.” She entered the room and sat on the bed. “I never knew how…”

When she didn’t finish, Chloe asked. “I read the articles about the team, how could you do a job like that?”

“Because someone had to protect the innocents like you from the monsters. Someone had to find the people who were lost, fight for the ones who died. When I was your age I didn’t know monsters were real. And then I got older and made some choices and got into trouble with the law and… My family saved me. The people in that picture, they were more important to me than anyone on this earth except for you. I watched them walk into hell to save people.” She drew in a ragged breath. “And I could never imagine living without them.”

“So all those times your said I couldn’t hang out with friends?”

Penelope nodded. “I know what’s out there and I’m just trying to keep you safe.” She stood. “Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

“Okay.” She watched her mom leave. She’d thought her mom was just a stick in the mud who didn’t want her to have any fun, but now she could see… Her mom knew what lurked out there in the world. Looking back at the paused news clip on the screen, she squinted at the row of agents. The reporter had talked about the FBI looking for someone using the internet to hunt victims, something Chloe’d been warned over and over about. She pressed play and watched it again and when she panned out, she saw her mom, just off to the side of the stage. Somehow seeing her on the old TV clip made it seem more real. “My mom had a cool job.”

Maybe her mom wasn’t so boring after all.

 


End file.
